


playing the same hand

by girl0nfire



Series: 30 Day OTP Challenge: October 2012 [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Gen, Steve Rogers: Card Shark, these two boys are my endgame forever and always brotp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl0nfire/pseuds/girl0nfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky doesn't regret teaching Steve how to play gin; what he regrets is teaching him to be so good at it.  For the 30 Day (BR)OTP Challenge, prompt "gaming/watching a movie".</p>
            </blockquote>





	playing the same hand

**Author's Note:**

> Day 3 of the [30 Day OTP Challenge](http://ericandy.tumblr.com/post/26596382488/ericandys-30-day-otp-challenge) on Tumblr.

Steve Rogers looks up at the dark-haired boy that’s standing above him. There’s a smudge of dirt on his nose, and he needs a haircut, but his smile is kind when he wipes his palms off on his rumpled trousers and offers Steve a hand up.

“Name’s Bucky. Bucky Barnes.”

Still a bit unsteady on his feet, Steve swipes the back of his sleeve over his nose and pulls it away to see red. If Bucky hadn’t popped up, the two larger boys from Steve’s gym class probably would’ve broken his nose. Steve is sure he looks terrible; his nose is still streaming, and he can’t quite get a handle on his roughened breath. His chest hurts, and he brings his palm up to thump it against his collarbone, trying to chase the rattle out of his lungs.

“Steve.” He coughs again. “Thanks.”

“What’d those punks want with you, anyway?” Bucky’s hands are stuffed back into his pockets, his sneaker kicking a rock along the cracked pavement. “They’re bigger than you, think they woulda been pickin’ on somebody that could take ‘em.”

Steve looks up from his now-sodden sleeve, and he catches the flash of concern that crosses Bucky’s face before it’s replaced with a kind of cautious amusement.

“Well, they can go hang. Why don’t you come back to my house, I’ll teach you how to play gin, my dad jus’ showed me how.” Bucky grabs Steve’s clean sleeve, tugging him along behind him. “It’ll be fun.”

+

Bucky tucks another one of his work shirts underneath the widow frame, trying to stop it from rattling with the frigid wind. His breath is rising in front of him in wisps, and he can’t quite stop the shiver that takes hold of his shoulders as he tries to blow warm air in between his clasped hands. Turning his back on the still-rattling window, Bucky takes the three steps to the foot of Steve’s small bed and places his hand over the rusted-out radiator beside it. Stone cold, still. It’s been a week with no heat, and meanwhile Brooklyn’s been buried underneath a record foot-and-a-quarter of snow that’s showing no signs of letting up.

“ _Damnit_ ,” Bucky curses under his breath, aiming a kick at the offending piece of metal for good measure, and then curses again when an answering spark of pain dances up his ankle as he connects.

The combination of his swearing and the dull clang of his shoe hitting the metal grating must wake Steve, because Bucky hears a rustling from the pile of blankets to his left. He leans his hip against the mattress, settling his weight down slowly until he’s seated on the edge, and waits another moment before Steve’s pale face appears from underneath a particularly threadbare plaid blanket. 

Steve opens his mouth to speak, but all the sound that makes it out is a dry, wracking cough. His body curls beneath the blankets, one shaking hand pressing against his chest in a thump that’s all too familiar to Bucky, who can only watch as Steve’s thin shoulders convulse hard enough to knock the metal frame of the bed against the wall. By the time the cough has died down, Steve slumps back exhaustedly, and Bucky reaches around him to help maneuver the smaller man into a sitting position.

Sitting upright usually helps; if it doesn’t, then it’s time for Bucky to boil another round of water so that Steve can try inhaling the steam. And if that doesn’t work, well… if that doesn’t work then Bucky will have to think of something else. The pharmacy’s closed because of the weather, and they’d spent the last five dollars between them on bread and gas for the stove three days ago anyway.

Dark circles ring Steve’s eyes like bruises, his lips a blue-white smudge on his face, and the pale coldness that’s written across the hollows of his cheeks twists between Bucky’s ribs like a knife. He wishes he could hit something; wishes he could sink his fist into some jackass’ gut and make this go away, chase away this bully just like the rest.

But he can’t. He can boil water and stuff clothes in the cracks in the walls and sleep with no sheets so that Steve can burrow his shivering body beneath every blanket they own.

Steve’s head is resting heavy against the wall and he’s avoiding Bucky’s gaze as he picks at a few stray threads in the blanket. He doesn’t want to talk about it, Bucky knows that, and he’s learned not to push when Steve’s this bad. Instead, he casts his gaze around the cramped corner of the studio they call Steve’s bedroom and looks for a distraction. His eyes settle on the dog-eared pack of playing cards that he uses to play solitaire sometimes, and he reaches to pluck them off the shelf.  
Bucky ducks his head, trying to catch Steve’s unfocused eyes, and waves the pack of cards in front of him. Steve looks up, and Bucky tries not to focus on the rasp of Steve’s shallow breaths as he starts to talk, his voice bright and a little out of place in the frigid apartment.

“Hey, Steve… you wanna play gin?” Without waiting for his answer, Bucky shakes the cards out and starts to shuffle them, laying out two neat piles between them on the blanket.

“Try not to embarrass me, I’m still smartin’ from the last time.”

Bucky picks up his hand and watches Steve pull his fists from his lap and reach for his own, fanning them out in front of him. The cards tremble slightly in his grip, but when he looks up at Bucky again, a hint of a smile peeks out from behind the dusky blue of his lips with a rough chuckle.

“Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just ‘cause you’re charming, Buck.”

+

“I’m booooooored.”

Dugan hasn’t moved from his cot in nearly an hour, his hat perched atop his gut as he gazes up at the ceiling of the tent. It’s pouring, and it has been for the last two days. Steve looks up from his sketchbook, finding six pairs of eyes looking back at him. 

“What?”

Morita speaks up from the ground, where Jones currently has him in a headlock. 

Apparently, even roughhousing has gotten boring.

“Well, you’re the Captain. Think of something for us to do.” The last word of his sentence is choked as Jones tightens his hold, and in another minute, Morita’s fist hits the ground in surrender as Falsworth counts him out. 

Bucky cuts into their match with snort. “Hey, cut it out, both of you. Leave a bit left for HYDRA, Jones.”

He’s answered in short order with three upturned middle fingers, and Bucky looks over at Steve with a pleading look in his eye.

Steve heaves a sigh, trying to come up with something to keep six cantankerous, damp, and stir-crazy men busy for a few hours. He’s almost ready to give up when he remembers the decks of cards that Howard had crammed into his pack before they’d left base.

Snapping his fingers at Dernier, rousing him from where he’d been half asleep with his back against the mouth of the tent, Steve points to the pack and takes it from the man’s outstretched hands.

Bucky catches on quicker than the rest of the men, and he’s already chivvying Dugan off the cot and smoothing the blankets so they have a place to gather around.

As he deals out, Steve catches Bucky’s eye and smiles at him. These soldiers have no idea what they’re in for, playing gin with the two boys that practically spent the last 15 years mastering it.

Only later, when Morita’s counting up their points and the rest of the Commandos are grumbling something about mind-reading, does Bucky clear his throat.

“Frankly, men, I’m disappointed. Not a one of you caught onto the upgrades I’d done on the deck. Tactical experts, my left foot.”  
Everyone, including Steve, looks up at him, varying looks of frustration and confusion on their faces. Bucky laughs, a deep-seated chuckle that works its way out of his chest with no difficulty and reverberates around the tent. He reaches forward and plucks a card out of Morita’s hands: the King of Spades.

“Notice anything… unusual?”

Dugan’s the first to speak. “You sonofa bitch!” He reaches across the cot and snatches the card from Bucky’s hand. Jones and Morita lean over his shoulders to have a closer look, and pretty soon, the card’s getting handed from man to man as they all take a turn admiring the finely-rendered copy of Dugan’s moustache that Bucky had somehow found time to ink onto all four kings in the deck.

Bucky’s laugh bubbles over their murmurs of appreciation, and Steve makes to grab his pencil and sketchbook again as the rest of the Commandos join in, their laughter drowning out the steady drum of the rain. 

Steve wants to remember this.

+

Steve hustles into the med bay of the helicarrier, still in his uniform. He hasn’t had a chance to change; he’d gotten Natasha’s call over his comm just as Clint was settling their quinjet in for a landing, and he hadn’t even waited for both wheels to touch down before he was prying open the exit door.

And it’s a good thing, too, because the red-white-and-blue coupled with the hard look on his face means that he doesn’t encounter any resistance as he makes his way toward the recovery area. He holds up a hand to silence the orderly that approaches him, and reaches forward to pull back the dull gray curtain.

Bucky’s laid out on the sterile-white hospital cot, the clear plastic of the oxygen mask he’s wearing obscuring his face. Natasha hadn’t lied, he looks like hell. Apparently, the contract killer he and Natasha had been trailing wasn’t working alone, like SHIELD had suspected, and he and his buddies had managed to get the drop on Bucky as Natasha called in their extraction coordinates. She’s fine; Bucky, on the other hand, had taken more than a few good hits and a blade in his shoulder before she could take them all out. Two white butterfly bandages hold the large cut on Bucky’s cheek together, and three of the fingers on his right hand are splinted. He’s going to have a pretty impressive black eye in the morning, too. 

Steve leans his hip against the mattress, settling his weight down carefully until he’s seated on the edge of the cot, and waits for Bucky’s head to turn toward him. His face is relaxed into the slack lines of sedation, and Steve knows that Bucky’s probably pretty out of it. After a few moments, though, Bucky’s eyes finally meet Steve’s.

“Hey, Buck. Looks like somebody finally got ‘round to making that ugly mug of yours a little better looking.”

Bucky tries to chuckle, his hand coming up to pull the mask away from his face so he can speak. His forehead wrinkles at the pain in the movement, though, and the laugh dies in his throat.

“Told Natasha not to bug you, Steve. I’m fine.”

Steve takes the oxygen mask out of Bucky’s hand, lifting the elastic up and away so that Bucky doesn’t have to hold it.

“Well, tough luck. I’m here anyway.”

Bucky plants his left hand against the mattress, trying to push himself into a sitting position, and Steve leans forward to help prop him up. Once Bucky’s settled, he turns his head towards Steve again.

“Med bay’s boring. Guess it’s not a _tragedy_ you’re here.” He lets out a rough cough, and there’s a flash of silver as he brings his arm around to clutch at his ribs. 

“How about it, Cap, you got anything we can do to kill time until Sitwell lets me out of this place?”

“You’re a stubborn bastard, you know that?” Steve rolls his eyes at Bucky and reaches into one of the pouches on his belt, pulling out a deck of cards. And that little trick drags a laugh out of Bucky, who eyes the rest of the pockets warily before asking, “Well shit, Rogers, what else you got in that belt of yours?”

“Snacks, mostly. One of ‘em is special-sized for an extra comm, but the rest are mostly decorative. I like to always have something on hand in case my men get bored in the field.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to roll his eyes as Steve shuffles the deck, dealing two neat piles of cards on top of the sheet between them.

Bucky releases his ribs and picks up his hand, fanning out the cards before fixing Steve with the same amused expression he’s been bestowing on him since they were eight years old.

“Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just ‘cause you’re charming, Steve.”

Steve returns Bucky’s smirk over his own hand. “Cut the trash talk, Barnes, I’m not the one that needs the luck.”


End file.
